299, 346; v.

83, 84.] "It was a current notion among contemporary mankind, this of Friedrich, that Belleisle's capture might be a mere collusion, meant to bring about a Peace in that Tallard fashion,--wide of the truth as such a notion is, far as any Peace was from following.

To Britannic George and his Hanoverians it had merely seemed, Here was a chief War-Captain and Diplomatist among the French; the pivot of all these world-wide movements, as Valori defines him; which pivot, a chance offering, it were well to twitch from its socket, and see what would follow.

Perhaps nothing will follow; next to nothing?
A world, all waltzing in mad war, is not to be stopped by acting on any pivot; your waltzing world will find new pivots, or do without any, and perhaps only waltz the more madly for wanting the principal one." This withdrawal of Belleisle, the one Frenchman respected by Friedrich, or much interested for his own sake in things German, is reckoned a main cause why the French Alliance turned out so ill for Friedrich; and why French effort took more and more a Netherlands direction thenceforth, and these new French magnanimities on Friedrich's behalf issued in futility again.

Probably they never could have issued in very much: but it is certain that, from this point, they also do become zero; and that Friedrich, from his French alliance, reaped from first to last nothing at all, except a great deal of obloquy from German neighbors, and from the French side endless trouble, anger and disappointment in every particular.